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The conceptualization of smart emerged by technological advancements penetrated the tourism industry with the pace of globalization transformed the destinations providing digitalized products. Even though smart tourism destinations are initiated by advanced technologies, the notion evolved in embracing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project economic, social, and environmental proliferation. A tourism destination is counted as “smart” which provides advanced technologies to improve the quality of tourists' experiences and enhance the residents' quality of life. The structure of a smart tourism destination is established on four basic pillars that cover technology, innovation, accessibility, and sustainability issues. Designating the notion of smart into tourism destinations is extremely vital since the shifting paradigm of tourists’ demands concern sustainability. The development of smart in a tourism destination is a crucial concern for destination management organizations (DMOs) integrating key destination components with the dimensions of a smart city to enhance the tourists' satisfaction and competitiveness of the destination. Therefore, one aim of this chapter is to elucidate the association between key destination components with the dimensions of a smart city to reveal the related smart tourism destination applications. Moreover, cultural heritage in smart tourism destinations forms an important part of tourism both with its tangible and intangible resources which have been involved in the emergent era of digitalization inevitably with all parties and processes. Hence, another aim of this chapter is to examine the dimensional shift in cultural heritage tourism within the framework of digitalization. Sharing cases of digitization of cultural heritage from different parts of the world, this chapter also reflects that it is inevitable to benefit from digitization and ICTs in order to reach the SDGs on the scale of smart tourism destinations. Analysis of academic publications and the national and international reports of the related authorities sums the methodology used to conclude the study with suggestions of future research paths to develop the field.

This chapter compares research management and administration (RMA) associations worldwide and the existing professional development frameworks (PDFs) for RMAs. The comparison is based on a study of 22 national, European Union (EU), and international RMA associations/networks which was carried out between April and June 2020 and revised in 2022; it aims at providing a comprehensive overview of skills and competences of RMAs as a profession to enable worldwide benchmarking and analysis.

The benchmarking analysis could provide useful information for those working on the development of professional frameworks training targeted at RMAs, or the recognition of RMA as a profession.

College support and career development are two significant challenges international students encountered during the pandemic, and these two factors have an enormous impact on the internationalization of higher education. The data for this study came from the 2020 to 2021 administrations of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) that includes over 500 international students enrolled at over 120 four-year colleges and universities in the United States. These students specifically responded to an open-ended item asking them what they think institutions should do better to assist their academic achievement and career goals. This study takes an in-depth look at international students’ qualitative responses about ways that institutions could better support their preparation for future careers. Using theories of cultural wealth and ecological systems to understand the unique experiences of international students during the pandemic offers an opportunity to help students not just in times of crisis but more holistically as they continue to pursue their higher education experiences in the United States. Ultimately, the authors provide recommendations for higher education professionals working with international students to better support their students’ career development and overall college experience.

Creative entrepreneurship is a vital concept that revolves around setting up a business that is novel, thoughtful, lucrative, and yet compassionate. The global pandemic has made people realise the significance and importance of creative entrepreneurship. Self-help groups (SHGs) play a pivotal role in boosting the rural economy and empowering people. Rural creative entrepreneurship has witnessed a significant transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conventional concepts vanished due to the modern shift towards digitisation. Usage of the technology became the new normal and SHGs made all possible efforts to acclimatise promptly. Online virtual meetings, conference calls, and groups on WhatsApp made common people techno-savvy, facilitating work from home. The adoption of digitisation became a catalyst for the development of remote/rural areas. The present study is focused on the role of creative entrepreneurship in supporting and helping SHGs to function seamlessly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors aimed at analysing pandemic and post-pandemic creative entrepreneurship through SHGs in Himachal Pradesh (India). The authors identify that Creative Entrepreneurship initiatives have changed and supported the livelihood of rural people during the pandemic. This chapter also highlights challenges faced by the SHGs during the lockdown and their resilience strategies.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This chapter presents an analysis illustrating the evolution of information systems’ development based on three interdependent phases. In the first period, information systems were mainly considered as a strictly technical discipline. Information technology (IT) was used to automate manual processes; each application was treated as a separate entity with the overall objective of leveraging IT to increase productivity and efficiency, primarily in an organizational context. Secondly, the introduction of networking capabilities and personal computers (instead of fictitious terminals) has laid the foundations for a new and broader use of information technologies while paving the way for a transition from technology to its actual use. During the second phase, typical applications were intended to support professional work, while many systems became highly integrated. The most significant change introduced during the third era was the World Wide Web, which transcended the boundaries of the Internet and the conventional limits of IT use. Since then, applications have become an integral part of business strategies while creating new opportunities for alliances and collaborations. Across organizational and national boundaries, this step saw a transformation of IT in the background. These new ready-to-use applications are designed to help end-users in their daily activities. The end-user experience has become an essential design factor.